Let's talk about the weather. No, that would get too complicated, involving strident tones and a lot of website links.
The weather used to be such a safe subject, the one thing you could always bring up in an uncertain situation - such as talking to your date's father or a relative you
hadn't seen for 35 years.
Now we don't even have that. The weather has become political. Global warming is being blamed for everything under the sun (pun intended).
OK, I'm clearly taking this too lightly. I can already sense the glares from people like Bill McKibben, the Vermont-based founder of Step It Up, who has written that
the issue of global warming is "as big as the Bomb."
Statements along those lines can probably be expected at Rock Ledge Ranch Saturday, Nov. 3, when the local Step It Up leaders (a Colorado College group) put
on their political rally. These people mean it, folks, and they don't care about costs or how much people's lives and businesses are disrupted. The world's at stake,
right?
Oh, oops. I said I didn't want to talk about the weather.
Maybe what we should talk about is whether... whether it is proper for Rock Ledge Ranch, a city-owned historic site, to be megaphone central for a political matter
that will likely figure in the 2008 election. Gene Smith, the city official who supervises ranch affairs, is of the opinion that it's not political at all. The debate is over.
Global warming is proven, ergo this rally is really just educational. That would be well and good if I knew when that debate occurred and who declared the "proof." I
don't believe City Council has ever taken a vote on the subject. There hasn't been a public hearing, to my knowledge. What this is starting to seem like is one of those
disingenuous issues that's too
important to allow doubt, too urgent to weigh all facts and too technical to listen to skeptics wondering if the emperor is wearing clothes. What, in this weather?